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July 25, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breast, lunch, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free

chicken chopped salad – and buying a bloody sofa

They say that moving house is one of the most stressful things a couple can do – well, that’s bullshit. Listen, we moved the entire contents of our flat to our new home in a Citreon C2. You’ve never lived until you’ve hurtled down the A1 with the threat of a chest of drawers tumbling off the roof of the car and littering the road with boxer shorts and buttplugs.

No, moving house was easy. It’s decorating that’s really turning my teeth to dust as I grind them with impatience and anger. Today Paul and I went sofa shopping, see, and quite genuinely I’d rather spend the afternoon having various items of kitchenware roughly inserted into my anus in a display window in House of Fraser rather than repeat it. It was just awful, with each shop bringing a fresh horror.

We made the mistake of starting in DFS, where we were immediately accosted by someone fresh out of nappies and with more product in his hair than there is on our freshly plastered ceilings. I reckon he took longer on his hair that morning than I’ve spent cumulatively on mine my entire life. And I used to have long, luscious hair, like a fruity Meat Loaf. His opening gambit was ‘So are you thinking of buying a sofa?’. I resisted the urge to throw my hand to my mouth in mock surprise and go ‘Heavens no, I’ve come to have the car’s tyres realigned and my brake fluid changed, how DID I end up in here?’.

I can’t bear nonsense questions like that (and I’m never rude to shopworkers, mind, they’re just doing what they’re told) – I’m hardly going to be renting a sofa for a weekend, am I? We shuffled around the store until his Lynx Africa got too much for my sensitive nose and we bid him goodbye, promising to ‘come back later’. Honestly there’s more chance of Princess Diana ‘coming back later’ than me.

Next was Barker and Stonehouse, which is pretty much the antithesis of DFS in terms of ‘style’ but I found it ghastly, not least because I immediately felt incredibly out of place in my George jeans and painting hoodie. There are some beautiful pieces of furniture to be had, but it all felt a little bit overpriced, and the only assistance offered amounted to nothing more than such an angry glare from an bumptious oil-slick of a man that I actually thought I’d trod muck in on my shoes. Perhaps he was looking disdainfully at our B&M carrier bag full of hot chocolates, but what can I say, I like a bargain. I got a quick snipe in as I left that ‘perhaps if I was opening an upper-class brothel, I’d consider it’, but it fell a little flat.

The next shop was some ‘Sofa Warehouse’ or suchlike – the only thing I remember about it was that, when I enquired about leather sofas, he immediately showed us to this god-awful brown number that looked like the first turd after a bout of severe constipation…and had cupholders in it. I’m sorry but no, cupholders in a sofa is strictly the domain of people who put tomato ketchup on everything they eat and who breathe loudly through their mouth. I mean honestly, I don’t even have a tattoo of a loved one’s name in copperplate on my neck. I bet the same people who leave comments like ‘RESIPEE PLZ K THX HUN’ under my food pictures have cupholders. Is it so difficult to strain forward and pop your can of Monster down on a coffee table? We made our excuses there and then.

And so it went on. We visited almost ten different places and each one was absolutely rammed full of awful shapes, awful textures, awful colours and awful people. There was one settee that looked like it had been stitched together by Stevie Wonder at gunpoint – about eighty different textures and patterns all stretched horrendously over some cheap metal legs. It looked like a corrupted MPEG of a colonoscopy. Who buys stuff like that, seriously? I wouldn’t burn that in my garden.

We did eventually find a settee we like, but then being tight-arsed Geordies, we dashed home to see if we could find it cheaper online and via Quidco, which we’ve dutifully done, but no – it’s cheaper in store! So that means tomorrow we’re going to go back and haggle like we’ve never done before. The sales assistant looked hard-faced (although it was hard to tell under her fifteen inches of Max Factor – she sneezed at one point and I swear half her cheek fell onto her blazer) but I reckon I’ll be able to get £200 off the asking price and free delivery. That’s my goal.

Tell you what though, you couldn’t pay me to deal with the general public – we witnessed some appalling behaviour from families with children today, including one set of parents who let their litter tip a fucking settee over and ignored the somewhat plaintive cries of the poor assistant who clearly knew that a call to a claims solicitors was mere moments away. You also get arseholes coming in like me who fake-smile at you, take a free cup of coffee and then spend thirty minutes clumsily pawing their way through the fabric selection book before hurtling home to order it online and put a hammer in the nail of the coffin of your job security. In my defence: I’m always super-polite and I’m never, ever rude. Plus anyway, I’m going back tomorrow so she’ll be getting her commission.

Christ though, it’ll be ten weeks before delivery. Ten weeks! What are they doing, pulling it with their hair from Penzance? Bah! That leaves nearly no time at all for the cats to completely destroy it before Christmas comes and we have to host family.

Anyway. That was my day. When we came back, we threw together whatever shite we could find in the fridge and the cupboard and fashioned together a ‘chicken chopped salad’ of sorts, made up of various bits of nonsense. It was tasty, but does it require a recipe? I’m not sure. I’ll give you a picture though, so be happy.

our chicken chopped salad contains:

healthy extra amount of light mozzarella (65g each)
two chicken breasts, cooked on the grill and coated in lime juie
four boiled eggs, sliced
diced crunchy iceberg lettuce
two rashers of bacon which Paul dutifully turned into shoe-leather on the grill
sliced beef tomatoes
tin of black eyed beans
tin of sweetcorn
sliced red cabbage

You could make this veggie friendly by omitting the chicken and bacon and replacing it with peppers, mushrooms, sofa cushions, horse farts, anything. I don’t often cover salads but it did make for a nice photo and a quick dinner, so here we are. Enjoy!

Oh dressing: we just mixed some fat free yoghurt with mint from the garden. Easy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

July 17, 2015

Posted under

breast, fakeaways, greek, lunch, poultry, recipe card, salad, savoury snacks, snacks, syn free

gyros and roasted veg

‘ello ‘ello.

No post last night because I was quizzing it again with the rabble – after deciding that ‘Bender and the Jets‘ was a cursed name, we switched it up and called ourselves ‘Puff and Bluster‘. We came mid-table, which wasn’t very nice for the barmaid to clean up. Use a dab of bleach love, it’ll thin it out. The best name of the night goes to ‘Quizlamic State‘ followed by ‘The Mad Twatters‘.

Next week we’ll be ‘Bruce Jenner-talia’ (of course) and then the ‘Menstrual Cycle Display Team’. Apparently calling ourselves ‘I wish this microphone was a big throbbing cock’ isn’t allowed as it would make the Quizmaster blush when he was reading out the scores. He’s a poor sport, not least because he doesn’t get dressed up like the Quizmaster from Sabrina.

Damn, I miss Sabrina. We had a black cat when I was growing up called Salem, who managed to sleep through being on fire. We had a coal fire and it would spit out sparks all the time – one such spark landed in his fur as he dozed in front of the fire, and we only realised what had happened when a flame appeared on his back and the air was thick with the smell of burning cat. We hastily threw a cup of tea (warm) at him, dabbed him out, and he just went back to sleep happy as larry. Not quite as dramatic as the time I threw a packet of cheap cigarette lighters on ‘to see what happened’ – let me tell you, it was like Hiroshima. He went on to live a long, uneventful life save for when he went missing for three months and returned with his hair so matted around his arse that we had to use a set of hair-clippers to get rid of his shitty tagnuts. We threw out the clippers afterwards. Hey it was unending glamour in our household!

Remember me waffling on a while ago that we’re active members of the Reddit Gift Exchange, where you send a random stranger (well not entirely random, they sign up for the service) a themed gift and another random stranger sends you something? It’s like a global secret santa and it’s GREAT fun. Hell, even I’m happy to take part, and I’m tighter than a astronaut’s arsehole. Anyway, this month’s theme was cookbooks, and we sent some nice Thai cookbooks off to a lovely lady down in Dorset and today we came back home to find a nice parcel waiting on the side. I say on the side, the cat had clearly decided the best place for it was on the kitchen floor so he could sleep on it. Which he did.

Turns out not only did we receive a charming Ching Chinese cookbook (her name, not me being all Bernard Manning) and a guide to Mexican food, but also – and I really think this is brilliant – a load of personal recipes that our Gifter had typed out and put in a binder for us! A mix of Scandinavian recipes that they’d found and even better, a collection of their own personal recipes! On top of that, a handwritten note saying how much they loved our blog (oh you!). I genuinely adore it – you all know how cynical I am – someone could give me a bunch of flowers and a cuddle and I’d be thinking is that they were trying to set off my hay-fever and/or bugger me – but this really touched me! IN MY SPECIAL PLACE. Thank you – massively – Jenny and Fox! We’re going to plan a Scandinavian themed week using your recipes as a thanks! 😀

GASP I’m all emotional. Let’s get some bloody dinner down wor pie-holes shall we. We were going to make pizza pies just to continue the theme of trying out what every fucker else is making but after the ‘sumptious’ steak bakes I really can’t be persuaded to try it. Perhaps I’m a little jaundiced by seeing 856 badly-focused photos of the bloody cheesy crusty things littering my facebook feed. Seriously my wall looks like a Google Streetview-tour of a burns unit.

So, Paul’s made gyros and roasted veg!

you’ll need these (makes easily chicken gyros enough for four)…

chicken gyros

1kg diced chicken
3 garlic cloves, crushed
3 tsp white wine vinegar
3 tbsp lemon juice
3 tbsp fat free greek yoghurt
1½ tbsp oregano
1 tsp salt
½ pepper
4 BFree Multi-grain gluten-free wraps (HexB for one)

roasted mediterranean vegetables

800g potatoes, cut into chunks
1 aubergine, sliced and quartered
1 red pepper and 1 orange pepper, deseeded and cut into chunks
1 red onion, cut into chunks
2 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp mixed herbs
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped

tzatziki

½ cucumber
250g fat-free natural yoghurt
1 tsp white wine vinegar
2 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt
pinch of black pepper

salad

3 tomatoes, diced
1 cucumber, diced
1 red onion, diced
handful of mint leaves, chopped

and you’ll need to do this…

firstly combine all of the ingredients for the gyros (minus the wraps) into a large bowl
cover and leave to marinate for at least two hours
next, prepare the tzatziki – cut the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds
grate the flesh into a bowl and discard the skin
add the rest of the ingredients and leave to rest for at least twenty minutes
next, prepare the mediterranean vegetables by mixing together all of the ingredients
spread out onto a single layer in a roasting tray, spray with a bit of oil and place in the oven at 190 degrees for around forty-five minutes
whilst that’s cooking, mix together the salad ingredients and set aside
when you’re ready, spread out the chicken onto a single layer and cook under a medium-high grill until well cooked, turning regularly
finally, assemble your gyros by spreading the chicken, tzatziki and salad onto a wrap and roll

SEE IT’S THAT EASY.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

June 23, 2015

Posted under

bacon, fakeaways, italian, low syn, mince, pasta, pork, poultry, recipe card, sauces, taster ideas

200 posts – plus turkey and bacon meatballs with homemade bbq sauce

Well christ almighty, we’ve made it to two hundred posts. 200! To put that into perspective, each post on average is around 1500 words, so that 300,000 words, or Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix combined with Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. AND, unlike JK Rowling, I can still crack a smile or two! Actually, that’s unfair, she seems like a lovely person – she’s just always looks as though she’s seen her arse and doesn’t care for the colour. I bet the words of a fat diet blogger really stings – she’ll be sobbing into her solid-gold handkerchief and dabbing her tears with £50 notes.

But honestly, it’s just incredible to me that we’ve racked up so many recipes, posts, slang words for willies, nonsense and flimflam in just under eight months, and that’s excluding the various interludes where we ~~stuffed ourselves with pizza~~ fixed up the house or the website. Normally we take up a hobby and give it up fairly quickly, but it’s become a proper routine in Cubs Towers – plan the recipes, buy the ingredients, type the blog.

Occasionally it can feel like a slog typing it all out, but listen – we know what it’s like to be on SW and seeing the same old recipes bandied around. There’s lots of nice foods but people limit themselves to the same watery stews, anaemic veg and nonsense chemical concoctions, and it’s just not sustainable. The best ‘recipe’ I’ve seen recently is a ‘jam doughnut’, which was a bloody brown breadbun injected with a bit of jam and rolled in sweetener. That’s no more a jam doughnut than I am a black lesbian. Why do that to yourself? Why not have a jam doughnut and syn it? Or, make a decent attempt at a low-syn pudding and take the edge off? Eh, I don’t know.

Certainly, our weight loss has been slow – but it’s been steady. I haven’t updated that banner in a few weeks but we’re nearly up to 60lb weight loss between us, and cumulatively, we’ve actually lost more than that – but gained a few pounds back on holiday. Our aim has always been 2lb a week for me and 1lb a week for Paul. I’ve seen grown women throwing tantrums because they’ve “only lost 2lb this week” (although actually, it’s usually “OMG onli lst 2lb dis wk :'(“, like there’s some kind of fucking tax on vowel usage) and I just despair – it’s so much better to lose slowly and not feel like you’re on a diet than it is to starve yourself, eat beans all day and shit your way to weight loss which you’ll immediately put on the second you slip into size-16 knickers. We’ve all been there too, losing a stone and then zipping around Tesco like we’re on the final round of Supermarket Sweep, running our arm along the biscuit aisle and emptying the shelves into our trolley. It’s pointless and doesn’t work.

Look through our recipes and you’ll see many, many different styles of cooking and flavours. We consciously avoid repeating recipes too much, and we’ll normally try and sneak in an unusual flavour or arrangement at least once a week. We’ve learnt so much and, for once, we’re enjoying being on a diet. This blog gives me (James) a mouthpiece for rambling and nonsense but it’s actually kept us on track – having to think up new foods means we’re focused on our diet and the ‘can’t be arsed’ element disappears.

But – and christ, prepare for your teeth to start rotting – the best part about all of this is you. Seriously. Seeing people trying our recipes, sharing links, joining our group (4,000+ members) or facebook page (almost 14,000 likes in two weeks), passing around that FAQ or even stopping us to let us know how much you enjoy it – well it genuinely, whole-heartedly makes our day. I’m actually quite a quiet person at times, and it’s such a lovely feeling to know people are enjoying what I have to say. Please continue to comment, to share, to take part, we love it all, and we promise that in return we’ll keep going. Not least because I want to get to 365 posts…!

Right, you can come back now. I know, feelings much. To celebrate, I’m going to post a recipe that we’ve been keeping back for a special occasion because it was so, so nice. It’s a long one, but you can take it. Just push out and think of England.

How best to do this…let’s go for constituent parts. So…

to make the sauce, you’ll need:

one very large white onion, or two smaller ones, I’m not a size queen (that’s a lie, I totally am)
500ml of passata
2 gloves of garlic
1 tbsp of smoked paprika
2 tbsp of honey (5 syns – but this makes – easily – eight servings, so I’m going to say one syn for the dish)
3 tbsp of balsamic vinegar
1 tbsp of worcestershire sauce
pinch of salt and a pinch of pepper
some chilli flakes if you want to punish your nipsy

This recipe is wonderfully easy. You’ll need a receptacle for your sauce – this makes enough to fill two medium sized ketchup bottles. Ours are Kilner and like everything else, we bought it from Amazon. You can get six for a tenner here. You’ll use about a bottle’s worth in this recipe, so the other bottle you can keep sealed in the fridge. It really does make a wonderful sauce which would be amazing on pulled pork or burgers.

The other thing I’m going to push here is our Kenwood Mini Chopper. Normally we chop our onions by hand but because the recipe calls for it to be very finely chopped, we used this. It makes very quick work of cutting up onions and various other things and is excellent for making breadcrumbs too. It’s £14 on Amazon. Not essential but I will say this – as people who use a lot of gadgets, this is probably one of our favourites. Right, so…

you’ll need to do this:

if you’re using a chopper, finely pulse the onion and garlic until you get a finely chopped paste – don’t make it too mushy mind
if you’re using a knife, you want it cut very fine
tip into a pan with a drop of oil and the salt and, on a medium heat, allow to soften
add everything else into the pan after five minutes or so (make sure the onion doesn’t catch, although, a bit of smokiness is no bad thing)
simmer gently for five minutes or so
allow to cool, and then blend it – again, we just tipped it into the Mini Chopper, whizzed it up and then poured it into the ketchup bottles – no need for extra dishes or gadgets

Keep those bottles to one side. Don’t put the lids on until they’re nice and cool mind. On we go…

to make the spinach, you’ll need:

a big family bag of spinach – not a pissy little few leaves, because it’s a scientific fact that spinach reduces in volume by 10,000% if someone so much as breathes near it
two garlic cloves – cut into the finest of slivers
a couple of squirts of oil or Frylight

and then you:

squirt the bottom of the pan with a drop of oil or frylight
add in the garlic
apply a gentle heat and allow the garlic to take on a bit of colour and flavour the oil
add spinach, lower the heat, cover and allow to wilt right down
serve (note: this spinach takes about five minutes, so make it at the end of your meal)

to make the meatballs, you’ll need:

500g of turkey mince – a lot of people ask me where they can find this – Tesco is my answer, and here’s another tip, it’s forever being reduced. If you spot it in the reduced meats bit, check to see whether it has a £3 for £10 sticker on it still – if it has, SCORE. Buy three packs and although it’s reduced in price, it still discounts the lot as though they were full price, which means you end up paying about £4 for three packets of mince. Damn, I shouldn’t give that away…
6 bacon medallions, or normal bacon with the ~~best bit~~ cut off
4 spring onions, chopped fine, white and green bits used please
one small breadbun made into breadcrumbs (HEB) – you’ll may not need them all
1 small egg
2 tsp of ground pepper
2 tbsp of dried parsley or even better, fresh parsley, but double up if it’s fresh

you’ll then need to:

put the oven up to 200ºC or 180ºC fan – do you know, I really loathe how Mary Berry says ‘fan’, fact-fans
cook your bacon – nice and crispy mind, then allow it to cool and cut it up (or use your chopper) into nice small bits
put your turkey mince into a bowl, add everything else, and mash it all together. Really take out your frustrations here. Lady in Primark gave you a shitty look? Someone cut you up in a company-lease BMW? Sat behind someone with dickies on the bus? Imagine that’s their face and PUMMEL
once you’ve got all that anger out and your tears have dried on your cheeks, you want to set to work dividing up the meatballs – keep them small – perhaps the size of a child’s bouncy ball* – and place onto a baking tray sprayed with one spurt of oil or Frylight
at this point, you might find you’ve got too many to eat in one go – that’s fine – set aside any leftover balls on a plate and put into the freezer, and once they’re frozen, take them off the plate and put into a bag (that way they don’t stick together whilst they freeze, genius right?)
brown your balls in the oven for 10 or 15 minutes until they’ve firmed up and taken on a bit of colour
finish them off in a frying pan – get it fairly hot, drop in your balls and then tip in maybe a quarter or half of your sauce, and cook them through, letting the sauce glaze your balls
serve on top of your noodles and spinach with carrots on the side if you want them

* know this. I spent about fifteen minutes, I shit you not, trying to think of something comparable in size to a meatball, and all I could think about was testicles. It’s hard being me.

to make the carrots, you’ll need:

six or seven carrots, spiralised
1 tbsp of honey (2.5 syns)
a squirt or two of oil
caraway seeds

Just a note about the spiraliser – you don’t need one. Look you really don’t. But they’re good fun and a piece of piss to use. We’ve only just got one and if you’re interested, you can buy one for £27 here. They make courgettes into spaghetti and various other things, but you can do the same thing with a knife, so don’t get your bajingo frothing if you can’t find one.

and then you’ll need to do this:

spiralise or cut up your carrots
put into a bowl and add the oil and honey
chuck in the caraway seeds and a pinch of salt
mix, mix, mix, mix – get everything nicely coated (it helps to use runny honey)
chuck in the oven until they’re soft – or crunchy, if you prefer it, up to you!

We cooked up some syn-free noodles and layered our plate with noodles, spinach and meatballs, with extra BBQ sauce on the top and those carrots on the side. You don’t need the carrots, but they’re a nice addition – we just had a surplus rattling around in the bottom of the fridge, so why not?

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

June 22, 2015

Posted under

breast, low syn, poultry, recipe card

chicken stuffed with spinach, sundried tomato and cheese

We’ve bought a new bed on a whim! That’s two incredibly impulsive things we’ve done in so many days – a big deal when you’re like us and the idea of being cute and spontaneous is buying a different scented candle at the garden centre, and even then only if it’s included in the BOGOF offer.

I woke up this morning full of piss and vinegar about the state of our pillows – I’d get more neck support if I rested my head on the jet of air from a hairdyer. I have a neck like a fucking Tetris piece and I’m forever clicking and cracking it, much to the chagrin of Paul. If I shake my head furiously I sound like one of those clacker toys. Plus our bed is awful. We bought it from ASDA or somewhere because we got a ‘great deal’ but a) it’s too small (we had a Caesar bed previously, that’s 8ft by 7ft) and b) the mattress is awful. It provides all the orthopaedic comfort of being mugged for your mobile in a backalley. We’re fat lads and every time we turn over the springs pop and ‘boing’ with increasing malice – I know at some point I’m going to turn over to snooze the alarm clock and be impaled right up my hoop. Imagine that – cause of death: ‘anal trauma caused by cheapskate John Lewis mattress’. I’d certainly be a wailing ghost.

Not only that, but because the bed is one of those awful ones with the drawers underneath, we spend the night being tormented by our cat constantly pulling at it, trying to get inside. That’s vexing enough, hearing the drawer roll forward an inch and roll back over and over again, but when she does get inside, you’re so highly-tuned to the slightest noise that you’re treated to ten minutes of her tongue rasping over her mary for ten minutes before she goes to sleep. Bag.

So we did what any normal couple would do, and rang the Premier Inn to find out how to buy one of the beds they use in their hotel rooms. We ❤ Premier Inn and we just don’t care. We sleep so well in a Premier Inn bed, and now we get to enjoy the experience at home without worrying about how many pockets of Gentleman’s Hot Vanilla has soaked into the mattress. Our new bed arrives in four weeks and it’s exactly the same beds they use in the hotel. Mind, I hope we don’t wake up with Lenny Henry in the bed…though he is a fan of the larger form…so who know. I might book into one of their rooms and steal the purple Premier Inn comforter just to complete the look, together with a menu of fried breakfast items to sit on my bedside table.

We did have an amazing period last year where we had a bed which was comprised of two superking sized beds pushed together. It took up the entire bedroom and was necessary because I needed to sleep apart from Paul for a few weeks whilst I recovered from an operation. Of course, being lazy, we just kept it for almost a year and with two quilts, eight pillows and enough room to literally somersault* (which I’d do if I didn’t think my neck would be turned to dust thanks to my corpulence), it was brilliant. It was a sad day indeed in Cubs Towers when we dismantled poor old Megabed and Paul dragged the mattress – which resembled a Jackson Pollock painting at this point – into the garage. Sniff.

But let’s cheer up, and look forward to the new bed. Tonight’s recipe is simple, elegant and tasty. Give it a whirl!

you’ll need these:

two good chicken breasts – not the water-filled cheap ones
sundried tomatoes in oil – six syns for 100g but you’ll be lucky to use 10g in each breast, hence the one syn on the recipe
your HEA of whatever cheese you like – a good strong cheddar works best, so 40g of light mature cheddar is tasty
make up a side salad of whatever you want – here I used rocket, spinach, tomatoes and spiralised cucumber, and served that with a dressing of yoghurt and fresh mint

and it’s as easy as this:

cut the side of your chicken – you’ll need a fairly small gash
you might think at first that you’ll never get everything in there and it’ll be too tight, but just do your best – try using your fingers to loosen it up
the cheesy bit goes in first, because you don’t want that oozing when things heat up
cram it full of spinach and a couple of tomatoes – really pack it in
now things get steamy – get a griddle pan and heat it up – you might want to rub a little oil on it if it’s a dry old thing, because you don’t want to have to peel your meat off the sides
sear the chicken on both sides
you’ll want to finish it off by putting it in the oven for ten or fifteen minutes – you want clear juices dribbling out when you prick it
serve with a bit on the side

Eee, get me a job at The Sun.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 26, 2015

Posted under

breast, poultry, recipe card, syn free

german potato salad and paprika chicken

I’m officially running on fumes – I haven’t been to sleep since Sunday night, and god knows why – I’m not suffering with insomnia or anything exciting, just didn’t feel tired last night. Which meant I was up typing up some new stuff for the book at 3am in the morning and driving into work at 6am. Actually, that’s a bit of a fib and in the spirit of being open and honest, I was actually kept awake by my body thoroughly rejecting the remnants of our bank holiday blowout – a Dominos pizza. I told Paul to order something nice and he ordered a bloody pizza with onion bhajis on it. Is it any wonder I spent most of the night dancing the sour-apple quickstep and bemoaning the fact I hadn’t put the baby wipes in the fridge to cool my nipsy?

I’m not surprised we both got ill, frankly. I mean, for a kick off, a Dominos pizza is like a zillion syns – I’m surprised Margaret herself didn’t kick my door in like a drug enforcement officer and snatch the Slimmer of the Month certificate off the fridge. Plus, it was almost two hours late thanks to the delivery driver getting lost. To put that in perspective, the Dominos we order from is probably around 5 miles away down a straight road. You couldn’t get lost if you tried. I mean admittedly the driver was as thick as a donkey’s cock and could barely string a sentence together, but even so, it’s not that taxing. I should sue.

Book is coming along nicely mind (but combined with our workloads being all over the place, means I’m not having the same amount of time to write for the blog – but don’t worry!) – here’s a couple of small excerpts:

On sparrows:

Paul was being terribly polite and British about the whole thing but I immediately weighed in on the argument to point out that ‘the Sparrow Ambulance was tied up attending to a coal tit with hurt feelings’ and that I lamented the fact I hadn’t had the foresight to fashion the poor bugger a tiny sling from a spent match and a postage stamp’.

On hotels:

Instead we showered, shrieked a bit, use the tiny hairdryer to attempt to dry my back hair despite said hairdryer being so weak it barely shifted the top off my free cappuccino, and unpacked our suits.

On flatulence:

Remember we were in a stable block too with other guests in adjoining rooms – it probably sounded like we were mixing cement all night.

On Paul:

I don’t know what Paul does to the crotch of trousers and boxer shorts but you’d think he had a sack of iron filings instead of a scrotum, because they’re always torn to shreds within a few days worth of use so every time he crosses his leg a bollock drops out like the last tangerine in the fruit basket.

Ah yes! How about a recipe? This was actually my favourite meal in a long time and really could not have been simpler to make. Serves two mouth-breathing fatties.

to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you’ll need:

ingredients for chicken: two decent sized chicken breasts – you don’t want one of those nasty supermarket breasts that look like the sole of a built-up shoe, treat yourself and get decent meat, plus garlic powder (1/2tsp), 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, pinch of black pepper and 1.5tbsp tablespoons of Worcestershire sauce

ingredients for german potato salad: three large potatoes, 4 bacon medallions cooked and cut into strips, 40ml of rice vinegar, 65ml of chicken stock, 1tbsp of dijon mustard (technically I think this is a syn, but split between two…well I won’t tell if you don’t), half a decent sized red onion cut nice and fine (or use red spring onions if you can get them, which we can, because we’re geet posh as owt), tablespoon of fat free greek yoghurt, 20ml of white wine vinegar, some chives for the top if you have them kicking about but don’t shit your pants if you haven’t got them in.

to make german potato salad and paprika chicken, you should:

recipe for chicken:

combine all the spices with the Worcestershire sauce to make a rub and rub that rub (great writing there, would recommend) into the chicken, getting your fingers deep into every moist crack and really ensuring your meat is slick and covered
pop into the fridge to marinade – longer you leave it, the better, but you can hoy it under the grill for around ten minutes a side and cook until the juices run clear when you finger it (the chicken that is, not you)
serve with your salad, but oh no, you’ll need to make the salad, so here we go..

recipe for german potato salad:

boil the potato for 25 minutes (you want them firm but a bit soft around the edges, like a middle-aged man in a Luton brothel) and then cut into thumb sized chunks (normal thumb, we’re not using Jeremy Beadle as a comparative);
NOTE: don’t bloody skin the potatoes, the skin is the best bit
as soon as the chunks are cut up, tip in the rice vinegar, mix and let them soak for a moment or two
add the chicken stock
in a little bowl mix the white wine vinegar, yoghurt and mustard together (whisk quickly, it’ll start to split if you so much as blink) and tip over the potatoes – mix again – don’t be shy about mixing, it’ll rough up the potatoes as you mix
add the onion and bacon
when you’re ready to serve, chop some chives over the top
the longer you leave this dish to sit, the better it’ll be

As ever, enjoy!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 21, 2015

Posted under

breast, chinese, fakeaways, fast food restaurants, kebab shop, low syn, panko, poultry, recipe card, savoury snacks, snacks, speciality ingredients, taster ideas

asian chicken nuggets

Both out and about tonight but could we let you down and not give you a recipe? NO. Here’s a failsafe recipe for Asian chicken nuggets. They’re Asian because of the marinade, naturally. I’m in a terrible mood at the moment, not helped by the fact I pulled FUCKING SPAIN out of my OWN Eurovision sweepstake. However: it’s Eurovision this Saturday and I absolutely can’t wait. I love it! My leather cheerio is already relaxing from the fug of amyl nitrate billowing across from Austria. Anyway:

3 syns is nowt, but you can make it completely syn-free (the nuggets anyway) by just blending your HEB bread allowance. But balls to that, use panko breadcrumbs instead and live like a king!

to make asian chicken nuggets, you’ll need:

two chicken breasts chopped into nugget sized bits, soy sauce, rice wine (1 syn for two tablespoons, but you only need one, so I’m not counting the syns), 1tsp five spice powder, 1 tbsp of soy sauce, pinch of salt, panko breadcrumbs (Tesco sell these and they come in at 4.5 syns for 25g – you’ll need 50g, so that’s 4.5 syns but as most of it falls off you’d be hard pushed to be anywhere near 4.5 syns, so I’ve said three)

to make asian chicken nuggets, you should:

well this is tricky – combine all the wet ingredients and spices with the chicken and leave to marinate – the longer the better, as the actress said to the bishop
put your breadcrumbs into a bowl and crunch some black pepper in amongst it all
drop each nugget into the breadcrumb, get them covered and pop onto a tray that’s been lined with greaseproof paper
bake in the oven on 180 degrees for around twenty minutes, turning them if you can be arsed – we don’t, but we’ve got a fancy tray with little holes in it which bakes from underneath too
serve with chips (make your own or just cheat like we do when you can’t be arsed and have McCains Rustic – they’re 1 syn for 100g) and beans

There’s no superfree on this meal but hey, you know what, have yourself a fruit salad and a good pump afterwards. You’ll be OK!

Before anyone asks, I got the basket from Amazon. It looks lovely! Click here for the link.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 14, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breast, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad

rocket, pea and mint salad

Want to know something embarrassing?

The first MP3 I ever downloaded was The Boy Is Mine by Brandy and Monica. Good lord! I was a country boy growing up in a council house in BHS adult-sized trousers, I don’t think I was ready for all that ghettofabulousness. I’m surprised the download made it past all the porn, mind, though I don’t doubt it took twenty minutes to download. Kids these day don’t know how lucky they are. Could have been worse – one of the first CDs I owned by Doesn’t Really Matter by Janet Jackson. Argh, I really had a thing for a marimba and sass.

The reason I am rambling on about music is because it’s an integral part of writing this blog – I can’t write unless I have music playing and no distractions, and even then I’ll spend forty minutes trying to find something I want to listen to on Spotify. It’s very distressing – a whole world of music and I always end up coming back to the same twenty or so songs. Paul hates it, because I always end up singing along and my voice sounds like a cat being pushed through a mangle, plus I add new notes and words into the lyrics, so a simple beautiful verse becomes peppered with falling scales and swearwords.

Anyway. I’m a bit pushed for time tonight so instead of words, I’m going to show you something. Something AWFUL. You may remember from my About Me page that it’s always been a hope and a dream of mine to get into the newspapers holding out my fat-bloke trousers after I’d lost so much weight? Well…when I was 18…

That hair though, seriously. I told you I used to have hair like Enya in her Orinocco Flow video. I’d give anything for a chance at that long hair again, though I wouldn’t have it quite such a sex-offender colour. Plus those trousers! 46″. Christ. Plus, white jeans. Never give a fat bloke white jeans, they’ll always have chocolate in their pockets and it’ll look like they’ve shit themselves when they stand up. What I didn’t mention in that article is how seething I was about losing out at the Slimmer of the Year finals to some black-footed leviathan who was too fat to get on an operating table. I didn’t have a sob story.

Ah well. It’s not like the haircuts ever got worse. Well, save for the Myra Hindley…

And of course, the Bjorn Again:

Aaah. Oh young James. You poor bastard.

Anyway, enough of all that. Tonight’s recipe is a simple salad full of fresh tastes. Just like my hair, am I right?

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you will need:

two chicken breasts, big old handful of rocket, couple of rashers of fat-free bacon, 200g frozen peas, small bag of new potatoes, mint, 0% fat-free natural yoghurt (make sure you pick up a syn-free version), lemon, fresh mint, four spring onions and rockets

to make rocket, pea and mint salad you should:

make the dressing: a few tablespoons of yoghurt, plus the juice of half a lemon and a few leaves mint chopped nice and fine – and set aside
grill the chicken breasts nice and plain and set it aside, and grill the bacon off and when cooked, cut into tiny slices
chop up your new potatoes into small chunks and boil them for a few minutes until they’re tender, adding the frozen peas into the boiling water for a couple of minutes too, then sieve the lot
chop up the spring onions into nice small slices
put a drop of oil into a frying pan, add the onion, potato, bacon and peas – I like to splash some lemon juice in;
after a few minutes, take it off the heat and add the rocket and a few sprigs of mint, and stir everything through
serve with the dressing and chicken, with some slices of radishes to garnish.

A simple, elegant evening meal. Yum!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 13, 2015

Posted under

breast, low syn, lunch, poultry, recipe card, rice

cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake

I’m writing in a bit of a huff.

See, I’m going to have to go to the dentist. A year or so ago I cracked my back tooth chewing on a hairbrush, which sounds fabulously fun but it hurt like hell. My dentist took one look, took it out and sent me on my way, with only a stiff jaw and a modest NHS bill to accompany me. All good. However, one of my wisdom teeth has clearly seen the gap left by my departed tooth and thought to himself that he would really rather like to move in. And it hurts. Not the tooth but rather a tiny bit of gum that I keep catching with my teeth as I shut my mouth. How can it heal if I keep biting into the bloody thing? It’s bad enough that I have to sit with my mouth slightly open at all times like a pensioner stuck on her Sudoku, but now I have to go to the dentist to fix it? Bah.

It’s not that I’m scared of dentists…well, no, that’s a fib. I am, but who isn’t, you can’t get a kick out of a man pumping a tool in and out of your gob and finishing it off with a squirt of something acidic to set your teeth on edge. OR CAN YOU. No. Oddly, the drill I can deal with because it doesn’t hurt, but when they use that little air-sprayer thingy I just want to bite his nipple off as he hangs over me in his dainty tunic. My skin is crawling up my back as we speak. I know where the unease about my dentist comes from – I had to have a tooth out when I was little after I (again!) cracked one eating nuts. I swear my teeth are made of glass. Anyway, the dentist I had back then clearly hated life, children and smiles, so set about me with all the care and precision one might elect to us knocking down a brick wall. I remember even now his pock-marked face being within kissing distance from mine, his bloodshot eyes darting around and spittle-flecked lips pursed as he yanked the tooth out. It wouldn’t come, so naturally he decided to put his entire bodyweight onto me, using his elbow in my chest as leverage. Fair enough, he got the tooth in the end, but he had to stop after forty minutes to have his brow mopped with a towel and Lucozade brought in and I had a collapsed lung and internal bleeding. No wonder I’m scared, though I’m not scared of much else. Rollercoasters? High as you like. Water? Chuck me in. Enclosed spaces? Pfft. As long as I don’t get stuck and have to be ‘popped out’ of the tight space by a team of firemen, I’ll be fine. That said…

Spiders bother us both, though Paul more than me. We once ran screaming from our Quayside flat when a spider the size of a small motorcar came trundling out from under the fridge. We were on the cusp of checking into a hotel when we realised our wallets were still in the flat, and without those, we’d be screwed. So we dutifully went back in only to see it, bold as brass, sitting in the middle of the laminate flooring. I swear if my vision had been good enough I would have been able to see his tiny little finger sticking up at me in defiance. Action was needed, so, screaming all the while, Paul ran to the balcony doors and flung them open as I dashed (I was skinny back then, I could dash) into the little office, got the giant (expensive) John Lewis waste-paper bin, emptied the contents on the floor, ran back into the living room (still screaming), trapped the little fucker and promptly ran to the balcony and threw him, the bin and almost myself over the bloody edge. I was surprised the little bastard didn’t have a parachute and a distress flare he was that big. Good times. The bin disappeared down onto a road somewhere and when we picked it up the next morning, an electric bus had run over it. Serves me right eh.

Paul’s also scared of all the boring things like being buried alive, and he doesn’t like the idea of drowning or burning, which seems an altogether reasonable way to live, whereas all my fears are quite silly. For one, I’m scared of dams. Terrified. Even looking at the word makes my teeth jitter a bit (which doesn’t help my sore gum). It’s not the fear of them breaking – oh no – it’s just how alien and unsettling they look. They have no business being there. Having a parent who works for the local water company means I have an unflinching and comprehensive knowledge of all the creepy things and secret pipes hidden just below the ground, ready to suck you away into oblivion. He once told me that a family crashed their car into a reservoir and the suction on an intake pipe held all the doors shut so they couldn’t get out. Yikes. Sewers too. Pennywise I could handle, but the sluice gate at the end would have me sucking on Kalms like there was no tomorrow.

I’m also genuinely frightened of irregular holes. Har-de-har not bumholes, no, but irregular clusters of holes sets me on edge. If I have a crumpet, I have to have it upside down otherwise I can’t eat it, and sponges make me feel uneasy if I look at them. I feel like I could have myself a story in Chat magazine surrounded by sponges, biting my nails, but alas I saw someone has beaten me to it. Things like sieves are alright because the holes are organised and clean, but I reckon I’m probably the only person ever to almost faint looking at Swiss cheese. Ah, aren’t phobias daft.

Tell you what’s not daft though – tonight’s evening meal idea, which uses up all the scraggly old broccoli you have lying around.

chicken, broccoli and rice bake

REMEMBER: this serves eight! It uses four HEAs and half a HEB. But the meal freezes nicely and will do for lunches and makes a good whack. The recipes doesn’t make a gloopy dish, it actually cooks right down and is more sticky than anything else. tasty!

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you will need:

370g uncooked long grain rice, 500ml chicken stock, 500ml skimmed milk, 250ml water, 1 bay leaf, sage rosemary and thyme leaves (or dried), 1 chopped onion, 2 cloves of garlic, 25g plain flour (4.5 syns), 250g fat free greek yoghurt, ½ tsp chili powder, 2 chicken breasts (cooked and chopped), 90g Gruyere cheese (or cheddar) (3 x HEA), 40g light feta cheese, salt and pepper, one head of broccoli, half of a wholemeal roll (as breadcrumbs) (half a HEB), handful of cheddar (HEA).

to make cheesy chicken broccoli rice bake you should:

measure out and rinse the rice. set aside
cook the chicken breasts and shred like they’re incriminating documents
pour the chicken stock, milk, water, bay leaf and sprigs of herbs into a saucepan over a medium heat for a few minutes then put to one side
spray a large frying pan with Frylight and cook the onions for a few minutes until softened
add the flour and coat the onions well
add the liquid mixture to the frying pan and stir well until there are no lumps
reduce the heat to low and add the yoghurt, chicken, chili powder and cheese and stir continuously until well mixed and the cheese has melted
transfer the mixture into a large casserole dish with a tight lid (or cover with foil) and bake at 180 degrees for 20 minutes
meanwhile, chop the broccoli into small florets – the smaller the better
stir the broccoli into the casserole dish along with the rice and mix well
re-cover, and bake for another 15 minutes
sprinkle the top with breadcrumbs and a little leftover cheese and place under a medium grill for just a few minutes until golden brown, texture like sun

ENJOY ENJOY.

By the way, I know we have the last two days of 7777 week to publish – that’ll probably be this weekend!

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 9, 2015

Posted under

bacon, breakfast, burgers, dressings, low syn, lunch, mince, pork, poultry, recipe card, salad, syn free, vegan, vegetarian

BLTE bap, hot tuna salad and larb burger

So here’s the thing. I get a lot of people telling me to write a book, and I’ve always wanted to, but never really had the right idea or the inclination to do research and gain the appropriate knowledge. Then, as it happens, Paul decided to stroke my ego in the car today (and we weren’t pulled over in a layby flashing our interior lights at lorry drivers, which is normally what we’re doing in the car together – honestly, I hope Eddie Stobart’s drivers aren’t epileptic, it looks like an Eighties disco in our car) and told me I really should get on with it. Well, I love writing, I adore writing this blog (for the most part) and because I’m massively egocentric, what better topic to write about than what is happening in our lives? That would be great for me – but boring(ish) for you.

Here’s my idea: I am going to write a book – it’s going to be in the same format as what we’re doing now with the blog posts, but with fictional stuff interwoven amongst the nonsense. It won’t be a slimming book, simply because I don’t want Margaret coming after me with her Lynda la Plante weave all awry and her gang of Slimming World lawyers straining on the leash to do me in for copyright law. But I’ll put a few of my favourite recipes in there too. It’ll be like Bridget Jones Diary, only massively less successful. Renee Zellweger could totally play me though, if she put 180lb on and fell face-first into a fire. Naturally the blog remains at the forefront of my writing, and this side project will be something I’ll be tinkering on with for the next few months. In the meantime, if you fancy reading more of our writing, don’t forget we have a book on Amazon which is an account of our four weeks in Orlando: read about how I spent the first two days of the holiday tinted blue thanks to cheap sunscreen, or how I exposed my not unsubstantial arse to a crowd in a waterpark. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, and by paying only £1.20, you’ll keep Paul and I in replacement ped-eggs. That can be found here.

Right, so with that announcement over, let’s start with day four of SP! Tomorrow I’m going to explain SP in a bit more detail and also tell you exactly what I think of it. I’ll give you a clue: I think it’s a load of horse’s arse. And I’m not even going to mark that as a protein, either.

BREAKFAST

BLTE

The E stands for egg (P), obviously. Plus lettuce (S) and tomato (S). There’s not an awful lot to say about this, other than:

we totally didn’t have two each *cough/splutter*
I got Paul out of bed to make this (because I was hungry) by setting off the smoke alarm and then hiding in the kitchen – he came dashing in completely nude like the world’s cuddliest fireman and then proceeded to tell me off for about five minutes, the whole while I’m standing there agreeing solemnly with everything he said and pushing the packet of bacon closer and closer to him. I know one day our actifry is going to burst into flame through overuse and we’ll both perish in the fire because we’ve played too many pranks with the smoke alarm. I bet Paul manages to die with a pious ‘see I told you’ expression on his face
there’s a certain type of wholemeal bread roll you’re allowed – I think it’s a Weight Watchers one – but we only had these little buns in the freezer and after waking Paul up by tricking him into thinking he was in The Towering Inferno, I didn’t have the temerity to tell him to go to the shop…so we just used these. They’re about the same size.

LUNCH

Hot, hot tuna salad

So good I named it twice, see. No, it’s hot in both senses of the word – hot because of the added chilli and also, served hot. Usually tuna salad is served cold and, to someone who doesn’t like fish, isn’t especially appetising. Hell, I’ll make Paul wash Little Paul in the bathroom sink before he gets his birthday gobble.

Christ can I say as an aside I realise that this post is making it sound like Paul has an awful life, like some hairy Little Mo to my Trevor. Honestly, it’s not that bad, no-one needs to call Relate for us just yet. The only time he’s raised an iron in anger is when our ironing lady was off for two weeks having something done with her ovaries. Having them out I think, not wallpapered.

Anyway, yes, tuna salad:

to make hot, hot tuna salad you will need:

several big fuck-off lettuce leaves (S) – I grow mine in the greenhouse and honest to God, it’s like Day of the Triffids in there at the moment. I’m lucky I have a retractable hose-pipe – if I get lost amongst the lettuce, I just pull myself free. Yep. You’ll also need two tins of tuna (P), two large sweet peppers cut into chunks (S), three shallots sliced thinly (S), two tomatoes cut into chunks (S), 1 tsp of black pepper, 1 tsp of garlic salt, 1 tsp of chilli flakes, 1/4 tsp of salt and a bit of oil.

to make hot, hot tuna salad you should:

mix the tuna together with all the spices and salt and set aside
fry the onion and pepper in a dab of oil or some frylight until soft
chuck the tuna in and heat through – why not add a bit of chilli sauce if you like your hoop to look like a deflated liferaft
serve up on the giant lettuce leaves
to eat, fold the lettuce into neat parcels and chew

DETOX WATER

Mandarin

My favourite water so far! It tasted like sunshine in a glass. Well no, not quite, but it’s just one ingredient:

mandarin – which is excellent for vitamin C, which is handy for preventing skin wrinkling.

Don’t forget, if you want a gloriously ostentatious way of serving up your water (and don’t think for a second that come Eurovision night that isn’t going to be full of punch) you can buy one from Amazon. I will say this, we’ve certainly consumed a lot more water since we bought it, but that’s more because I’m such a tight-arse that I’m determined not to lose face and see it consigned to the back of the cupboard along with the lollipop maker and the ravioli crimper.

Haha, crimper.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – GEOCACHING

geocachingday42

Ah geocaching. I’ve rumbled on about geocaching before – it’s essentially a giant treasure hunt where no-one wins. But you don’t need to win a prize to enjoy it, it’s fantastic fun if you’re GIANT NERDS like us. People have hidden containers all over the world (and I’d bet my savings there’s probably at least five within easy walking distance from your house right now) and you use your GPS or an app on your smartphone to find them. Then you sign the book and put it back. It’s a great way of:

livening up a charming walk out in the country; and
making the British public think you’re loitering in the bushes with your knob out ready to strike.

See, part of geocaching is that you have to be subtle – some of the containers are hidden in plain sight, so you have to try and swipe them without people seeing, which can be difficult when you’re stumbling around in the trees like a flannel-shirted rapist. We had a lovely walk around a nature reserve and ended up on one of Northumberland’s fantastic beaches. Just look at that scene above. See, the North is so much more than child-beating and whippets. That picture of the rock at the top – that’s called a disco cache, where the logbook is hidden inside a container designed to look like something completely different. They’re extra hard – I’ve hid caches myself inside golf balls, birds nest and even a fake blob of chewing gum. It’s all free of charge and hey, if you’ve got kids, get them involved too.

Everyone I ever explain geocaching to wrinkles their nose and asks me what is the point, but it’s great fun. You’ll end up enjoying yourself, trust me. Visit www.geocaching.com, pop in your postcode and go and find the closest one to you.

DINNER

Larb burgers

Told you I was getting the use out of my lettuce! Note: I used a carrot and ginger dressing from Tesco on this which works out at almost a syn for two tablespoons. But you can use fat-free vinaigrette if you dare not sacrifice a syn.

to make larb burgers you will need:

500g of turkey mince or three chicken breasts (if you’re using breasts, then you’ll need a mincer – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that?), 3 shallots (S) (one thickly sliced, the other two thinly), 3 cloves of garlic (S), a few lime leaves (get them from Tesco’s world food bit), 1 small stalk of lemongrass, a dash of fish sauce, a bit of ginger (you only need a little knob to really taste it – and how often as a gay man do I get to say that), a lime (S), pickled cabbage (S I think) and the ubiquitous giant lettuce leaves (S).

to make larb burgers you should:

get your food processor or blender or what have you on the go
throw in the thickly cut shallot, garlic, lime leaves, lemongrass, ginger, fish sauce and a pinch of salt and pulse to a paste
add the meat and pulse so it’s nicely mixed up with the spices
shape into six burgers
heat a griddle pan with a drop of oil or some Frylight and get it medium hot
add the burgers and cook hard – you want to get some sear lines into the burger for that classy bitches look
turn over and repeat on the other side – we cooked them for seven minutes each side to really cook them through – always be careful with chicken
if they look a bit dry, throw some lime juice into the pan
in the same griddle pan, put the finely sliced shallots in to fry off in the juice of the meat and lime
once cooked through, assemble onto the lettuce leaves, add some pickled cabbage and the shallots, and serve (you can add dressing if you want, I found it wasn’t necessary.

Enjoy! Oooh it’s like you in a tropical paradise, right?

DAY FOUR DONE.

Posted by

chubbycubs

Posted on

May 6, 2015

Posted under

breakfast, breast, desserts, low syn, lunch, poultry, quark, recipe card, salad, snacks, speciality ingredients, sweet snacks, syn free, taster ideas, vegan, vegetarian

chicken fattoush

Before we launch into day two, I’ve found a brilliant little feature hidden away in the background of my blog – I’ve got the ability to see what people search for to find my blog. It’s so I can tailor the pages in such a fashion to pick up google searches for SW recipes and the like. All very exciting to a data-nerd like me. But I thought I’d share some of the more…obscure searches that people have used to come across (literally, in some cases) my blog..

‘carrot cake overnight oats slimming world’

Excellent! One of my favourite recipes. Nice choice, google.

‘dont trust slimming world’

Oh no! What do they know that we don’t? Maybe it’s all a cult – that would explain all the fucking clapping, for sure. Maybe Mags herself is plotting to take over the world one watery curry at a time?

‘look at my chunky pussy’

Good lord. I like the fact that someone typed that into google too, like it was an instruction rather than a question…

‘1000 heartbeats shit’

I couldn’t agree more. Vernon tries his best, god love him, but you’re still essentially watching someone solve wordsearches during an echocardiogram.

‘miniature brown teapot with teapot and bread on’

I bet they were absolutely gutted when this appeared. For the record, I prefer my “teapots” colossal and without a “lid”, if you know what I mean. If you don’t, I’m talking about cocks again.

‘chocolate in rainbow world’

God knows.

‘stocky hairy men washing each other’

They’d be disappointed. I wash Paul with the extendable hose from outside. However if watching two fat blokes grappling over the ped-egg and yelling nonsense at the TV melts your butter, get in touch.

‘can dogs have baked cod’

Yes, but only if it’s their birthday.

‘is semen classed as a syn on slimming world’

No, it isn’t – but remember, only sluts gargle.

‘young chubby has two at once and loves it’

No denying this one. It was the best night I’ve had in a while. Four fingers at once. But that’s a Kitkat for you (11.5 syns).

And my personal favourite:

‘wat syns.cn u see wen sum is busy with evil’

Words fail me. Seems like a good time to start then…

BREAKFAST

Red berry fruit salad with sweetened Quark

Nothing to this other than it’s a medley of different red berries and, because it’s SP week and you’re not allowed a yoghurt if you’re sticking to it 100% otherwise your consultant will be around to fling a dog-turd off your window, we mixed quark with a little bit of milk and some sweetener. I fail to see the point or the logic to it but we’re fully invested. I can’t imagine my body is going to shut down like Titanic’s furnace the very second a Muller passes my lips but nevertheless. The Quark (P) tasted alright, but…we used frozen mixed berries (all of them (S) foods)on the bottom of the glass that had been allowed to thaw (but not cooked, because christ I can’t handle two moans about bloody tweaking in one post) and chopped strawberries (S) on the top. That masked the taste. Pomegranates aren’t speed though, surprisingly, but you could swap them out for raspberries if you were desperate.

LUNCH

Chicken fattoush salad

Note: this can easily be syn-free – just omit the olive oil. But I like a bit of oil on my dressing. Up to you…OH and in our haste this morning to make this before work, we forgot to take a picture. But it looked like the one above, trust me.

to make chicken fattoush you will need:

½ cucumber (S), 1 green pepper (S), 3 medium tomatoes (S), 6 spring onions (S), 1-2 chicken breasts grilled and cut into strips (P), handful of chopped coriander, handful of chopped parsley, as much leafy salad as you like, 1 tbsp finely chopped mint, 40ml lemon juice, salt and pepper, 1 tbsp sumac.

to make chicken fattoush you should:

chop the cucumber in half lengthways and scoop out the seeds (you don’t have to do this, but it stops it getting soggy)
chop the pepper, tomatoes and spring onions into chunks
mix all of the above with the salad leaves, herbs and chopped mint and chicken
in a separate small bowl, whisk together the sumac and lemon juice until well mixed. Add salt and pepper to taste.
pour the dressing over the salad, and eat!

For heaven’s sake though, have a mint after. All that onion!

DETOX WATER

Mint and cucumber

Someone posted a comment on a Facebook group I use about a ‘Sassy Water’ where, if you drink it, the nutrients and wonderful vitamins swimming around in your body would make you lose A POUND AN HOUR. Ridiculous right, and not least because Sassy Water sounds like a particularly ghetto-fabulous drag queen. But what made me more aghast – and I am a man who spends a good two hours of my day with my hand clasped theatrically to my lips with a ‘well fuck me’ expression – PEOPLE BELIEVED IT. People honest to God without theatrics believed it. How?! How do these people remember to breathe in AND breathe out? Imagine if losing weight was as easy as drinking a few glasses of water with the Tesco Reduced Items basket bobbing around in it like a turd in a pier? For goodness sake. Tell you what, maybe that searcher above was right and Slimming World is a big con after all, keeping us fat so we can keeps Mags in Bentleys and Montecristos.

Just kidding, I love SW really. In the water today then:

mint from the garden, chopped up fine; and
enough cucumber to make a nun purse her lips.

Cucumber is good for the skin and mint is champion if your breath bleaches people’s hair as you talk. Still tasted like I was drinking a face-mask mind.

BODY MAGIC IDEA – WALKING

daytwobody

Today’s body magic was walking – into work and back again. I’ve mentioned before that walking into work is a chore (opens in a new window that one, so don’t worry, give it a read) but today was especially tiresome. At 5.00pm, I looked across Newcastle from my office and saw the sun bright in the sky, children playing happily and I could almost hear tinkly laughter from the street below. I got in the lift, travelled seven floors to the bottom, and went outside. It was like The Day After Tomorrow, with horizontal rain and hail. It felt like my face was being powersanded by God himself. Of course, I had a hoodie on, so I was fine, but Paul was immediately caught out by his cheap-o Tesco work shirt turning see-through so everyone could see his dirtypillows. It was an uncomfortable swim home. To top it off, the cows on the town moor thought it would be a jolly jape to start running together over the path with their shitclad tails swishing about, meaning we had to powermince to avoid them, slipping in the cowpats they’d skilfully and carefully left on the path whilst the rain and wind blew all around us. At one point I almost collapsed onto a bench and told Paul to go on without me. It was like Threads, and that shit’s real.

Of course, the rain, wind and bad weather stopped the very second I pressed the door-release on my car keys.

God, if you’re up there, why do you hate me so? Is it the blasphemy? The sodomy? The fact I look better with a beard? Bah!

Anyway, in total, I walked 7.64 miles throughout the day (including a schlep around Tesco and my many walks to the photocopier) and burned 1308 calories. Paul managed a respectful 3.4 mile walk (into work and back – he forgot to leave his pedometer on). We definitely earned our dinner.

OH WHAT A SEGUE.

DINNER

Well, this is embarrassing. It’s still in the oven! We’re having oven-baked meatballs but didn’t realise that they took over two hours to slowly cook. Great! I’ll post a picture tomorrow. Promise. Honest. But the recipe…:

ingredients: 2 large onions (S), 500g lean beef mince (P) (or pork, or turkey!), 2tsp dried oregano, 2 garlic cloves (crushed) (S), salt and pepper, 400g tin of chopped tomatoes (S), 400ml passata, 150ml vegetable stock, 2 medium courgettes (S), 1 medium aubergine (S).

recipe:

finely chop the two onions and put into a bowl with the mince, garlic, oregano, and salt and pepper
combine the mixture by hand and roll into twenty or so equal balls
titter at the word balls
place the meatballs into the fridge to chill, perhaps pipe a bit of Michael Buble in for them
trim and chop the courgettes and aubergine into chunks and mix together in a large roasting dish with the tomatoes, passata and vegetable stock
cover the dish with foil and cook for 50 minutes at 200 degrees celsius
add the meatballs to the dish, recover (the dish, not your dignity) and cook for another 40 minutes
serve!

We’re having ours with turnip and green beans because that’s the only thing left after we made sassy water.

DAY TWO DONE.